From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 10 1999 - 13:34:09 MDT
I feel compelled to repeat what is to me the obvious solution
to the list getting buried under posts on hot-button topics:
summarize your thoughts in well considered articles (I made a
similar plea on 14Jan99).
Which makes readers better off: wading through thousands of
back & forth flames, or skimming a few dozen articles which
writers have spent at least days writing and rewriting based
on private comments? The answer should be obvious: when they
work, articles give a coherent overview of a subject.
And when they fail they reveal more clearly an author's
insufficient grasp of a subject.
I have Lott's book on G**S in front of me, and will form my
opinion on the subject based on it and other thoughtful books
and articles I find. I have skimmed enough of the mass of
posts on the topic here to realize I won't learn enough from
them to make it worth my time. And I have lowered my opinion
of those who have devoted so many posts to such topics.
If you guys really cared that much about the topic and had
something insightful to contributed, you'd be writing articles.
You'd be asking friends to comment privately on drafts before
you offered them for wider consideration. And once you felt
they were good enough, you'd be submitting them to editors
for endorsement via inclusion in journals/etc (such as Extropy
Online or the Journal of Transhumanism.)
What, you don't have the time for that? Then where the h**l
do you get the time to bury us under thousands of posts on such
topics? Oh, posting is fun but writing articles is work? Fun
for you maybe, but please think for a moment about the rest of us.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
after 8/99: Assist. Prof. Economics, George Mason Univ.
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